Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[nenjin]

So my friends and I have been doing nightmare runs for the last week or so.

And I gotta say, I really enjoy how this game handles. Never in L4D did I feel this skillful. That probably has to do with the fact it's guns vs. melee here, but still. Playing Vermintide it's like the game allows you to be as good as you can. There's (almost) no animations holding you back, tying your hands. You're as free to succeed as you are to fail. Nightmare is tough but it's to the point now where my friends and I can finish it with >200 damage taken. In fact we can pretty much ace the whole level on Horn, including the Rat Ogre. Only to fail right at the finale. Usually it's Stormvermin cleaving through 3 players at once, or someone missing the jump to the hole and going down right at the entrance to the elevator.

So yeah. Setting aside the lack of versus mode, I think VT is by far the better and more enjoyable game than L4D.

It's also kind of incredible to me the caliber of players I meet in Nightmare. Jesus some of them are so bad, it's a wonder how they got as far as they did not knowing fundamentals like "don't run ahead of the party" "Look behind you every once in a while" "Use all the health up." It's also kind of surprising how bad some people are at the melee combat but I think that comes down to not using block enough. Block is stupidly effective in this, more effective than in other 1st person melee combat games I've played. I think that's why I enjoy VT so much, actually. It feels appropriately responsive enough to deal with the mass swarms of enemies you have to kill.

[nenjin]

Blessing of Sigmar went live.

There's hero trinkets now that you equip to increase your chances of loot for your class appearing. However the flat bonus chance you were getting to that already? Gone. So now you basically have to equip your class trinket if you want a snowball's chance in hell of seeing a class item every game.

The shrine is in too. Right now you can use your class trinket and item disenchant tokens to instantly roll new loot. Seems like it will have other functions in future patches. As a note, the cost of unlocking item traits has been increased as well, and you can now disenchant exotics, trinkets and hats.

Veteran tier gear has been introduced as well. It looks super fancy and has its own skins just like every other loot tier. It will roll max stats on all the traits it gets. The downside? You can only ever get one of each kind, once. Which seems pretty stupid to me, the whole meta is continuing to run missions trying to get that weapon with just the right stats. If Veteran weapons don't work like that, then there doesn't seem to be much point to the tier itself.

And happy day for me, they basically buffed 2-handed swords, increasing the speed of consecutive light attacks and finally fixing the bugged damage on exotic two-handers.

All in all a pretty good patch but there are some questionable design choices there I think.

[Teneb]

Necroing the thread to say that the Last Stand update is live. It is still downloading for me, but it appears to be pretty big (6GB). There is quite a bit more info on their site, fortunately. It comes with two maps, one free, one paid (though only the host needs to have it). Said paid map is pretty damn cheap though.

[nenjin]

Sweet.

Yeah, I definitely needed something new to do in game. Cataclysm is just so fucking brutal now, we maybe finish 1 in 5 games. And it'd be nice to just kill some rats instead of all the other pressures of gameplay at higher difficulties.

[Folly]

N-N-N-N-N-N-NECRO BUMP!!!

So, Vermintide 2 is a thing, and it's coming on March 8th.

What little I remember from the first game is that I got my money's worth, but not much more than that. The game just didn't have long-term appeal.

What I'm reading about the sequel says that each of the 5 classes now gets 3 subclasses, the loot system has been vastly improved, and enemies are more visually diverse with Chaos and Vermin teaming up. Other than that not much has changed.
Still, that's enough for me to give this series another chance. Especially considering the $30 price tag, plus 10% off on Steam pre-orders.

[Teneb]

Yeah, the super-cheap price (it's R$55 for me when a Triple-A title is often R$120) makes it very interesting indeed. And they went with Nurgle for Chaos instead of angry boy Khorne. I guess the Skaven now are one of the vassal clans of Pestilens, to keep with the theme.

[nenjin]

Yeah I was very surprised with the price. Eminently acceptable based on the quality of the first game.

I've also heard the sequel re-does the gore physics, so now you can chop guys in half in different ways.

My biggest hope for the sequel though is that they addressed networking. In VT1, being P2P, the host always had perfect latency. Their strikes landed where they should, rats didn't get to sneak hits in on them despite their view not reflecting that. Lots of my playtime I was host, but when I wasn't host, maaaaaaaannnn Nightmare mode would get frustrating as you're doing exactly what you should.....and still lose 1/3rd of your health to latency strikes constantly.

It may not be anything they can do much about, being P2P....but when people in the same zipcode were having these issues, me thinks there's improvements they could make.

TBH I'm not hog wild about classes and sub-classes. Sure it gives you something to do beyond just praying for a good loot drop at the end of the mission, but mentally it hasn't resulted in me going "Oh I'm going to play the fuck out of this." I barely played the new maps in VT1, my burnout was so total and complete I just couldn't bring myself to get excited about a different map.

So I'll definitely pick it up at release. And I'm sure I'll fall in love with it all over again, especially if the 2-handed sword feels as good to use in VT2 as VT1. But I think I'm going to make my response to it a little more measured this time, and not crack out playing 40 hours in a weekend this time around.

[Kagus]

I've been peeking at VT2 somethin' fierce. Only problem is, I'm currently working off of a craptop that really couldn't run the first one, and that has also now lost its audio output. So... yeah.

I just thought it was funny that just as VT1 started working out some of the worst kinks and finally managed to bring its Steam rating all the way up to Very Positive, that they announced Vermintide 2 and the implication that the original would get dropped like a stone. Ahh, Fatshark... May ye forever bless us with high-RPM rat ogres.


Not entirely sure what I think of the subclass system, but at least Bardin gets to be officially suicidal now (and I have it on good authority that Trollslayer Bardin is great fun to play as). I'm also very interested in seeing what kind of bugs/glitches we'll see in the release version of VT2. But yes, functioning netcode would be lovely... Preferably also some sort of failsafe to prevent you from just getting dropped from the host right as you enter the wagon on a double-grim Nightmare run, and thus missing out on the loot roll.

[nenjin]

I'm just looking forward to saying "Rats off to ya!" with my friends again.

[Folly]

My biggest hope for the sequel though is that they addressed networking. In VT1, being P2P, the host always had perfect latency. Their strikes landed where they should, rats didn't get to sneak hits in on them despite their view not reflecting that. Lots of my playtime I was host, but when I wasn't host, maaaaaaaannnn Nightmare mode would get frustrating as you're doing exactly what you should.....and still lose 1/3rd of your health to latency strikes constantly.
It may not be anything they can do much about, being P2P....but when people in the same zipcode were having these issues, me thinks there's improvements they could make.

From the main website:

With an improved matchmaking system and support for dedicated servers, the multiplayer systems have been overhauled and enhanced.

I'm not sure exactly how this will play out, but it's encouraging.

I also noticed Mod Support listed on there. I am now eagerly anticipating Sienna and Kerillian nude mods. 

[Kagus]

I also noticed Mod Support listed on there. I am now eagerly anticipating Sienna and Kerillian nude mods. 

And Saltzpyre, of course.

[Folly]

I've been playing the pre-order beta.
So far I've not noticed any latency issues at all...though I'm not generally super-picky about that sort of thing.
Matchmaking works great. I've never had any trouble getting a group of real people quickly, and they are mostly able to carry their own weight.

I played Bardin enough to unlock all of his subclasses, and don't much care for any of them. None of his weapons have any reach, which means he can't really deal with crowds and can't damage enemies safely. Slayer has no survivability, and as much fun as spamming his leap-attack is, it's not enough damage or crowd control to really make him useful. His tank class can really take a beating, but there's little need for a tank in a game where the focus is mowing down hordes of vermin as quickly as possible. He might be more viable in the hardest difficulty, which I haven't tried yet.

I played Sienna enough to unlock her second class, which give her a homing fireball that is excellent for popping those special enemies, and comes with a fairly quick cooldown. The second class also comes with a talent that speeds up heat ventilation, allowing her to spam those staff attacks. Igniting swarms of vermin is always satisfying.

I only played Kerillian's first class  so far. Her weapons have amazing reach and penetration, allowing her to shred swarms at close range. She also has some fun variety of bows, allowing varied play styles. My favorite right now is a poison bow whose arrows create clouds of poison, damaging and disabling groups of enemies. But she also has sniper bows and machine-gun bows.

I kinda hate the dust-filter that seems to cover the screen everywhere I look...I'll never understand why some game developers decide to do this crap to their own games. There's also a lot of fog and depth of field crap going on, but I was able to bypass that stuff with ReShade and get the game looking fairly pretty.

I see the game supports Tobii's eye-tracking thing, and now I'm kind of interested in that. It's hard to find reviews from people who actually have the gadget though, so I'm hesitant to shell out $150 for it.

[Folly]

I just had an interesting run on the final map...the last boss bugged and ended up sitting behind a door while endless waves of rats swarmed us. So three of us ended up having to guard the dwarf while he fried the boss through the door with his flamethrower. It took about 20 tense minutes. After a day of lackluster groups, it was somewhat exhilarating to find three companions who could actually survive something like that.

Anyway, Steam tells me I'm up to 85 hours played, and I'm still enjoying the hell out of this game. Easily one of the most improved sequels I've ever played.

[Sindain]

The Skittergate is bugged to all hell. I think only 1 out of 7 or 8 of my runs on that map didn't run into some kinda weird bug. First couple times I did I was duoing with my brother and two bots. Bardinbot got stuck on the Norsca side of the Skittergate twice. Lost both times cause of it. On the third try both final bosses got stuck so we just sat there shooting them and won easily.

I think the game has some issues. It is really buggy and some of the grimoire placement is cancer (which yeah you can ignore them, but once you start running champ and everyone is trying to farm reds most pugs will want 2 grims) but overall I've been enjoying it a lot. "only" 58 hours logged but I don't see myself stopping in the near future.

[Kagus]

I think the game has some issues. It is really buggy and some of the grimoire placement is cancer

Glad to hear that they're staying true to the original formula!


Really though, Fatshark's dev team seems to be the dog with the golden colon. You'll get some real nuggets from it, but they're covered in shit.